RICHMOND, Virginia - A commission created to study Virginia's mental health system will examine the criteria used to force treatment of mentally unstable people — a topic that has invited scrutiny since a deadly shooting spree at a state university.
Virginia's involuntary commitment laws are among several issues a special mental health commission of the Supreme Court of Virginia plans to tackle at a meeting Friday. The Commission on Mental Health Law Reform was created last year and has been working on a mental health reform package for the state's 2008 legislative session.
The topic gained urgency in April, after Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty at Tech before taking his own life. Cho had been ordered into involuntary outpatient treatment in 2005, after a special justice found that he presented "an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness."
"What's ridiculous about this is we're talking about changing the bar to let people intervene and put them into treatment," Earley said. "Just by lowering the standard a little doesn't mean that someone's going to be abandoned for years and years in an institution."
But others on the task force are concerned that changing the standard will infringe on people's civil rights and lead to warehousing of the mentally ill, Earley said.
Mark Bodner, a special justice who heads up the commitment task force, said he and two other judges in Fairfax, just south of Washington, D.C., handle between 650 and 700 involuntary commitment cases each year. He said the current commitment language has not been a problem.
"I think the standard works well," Bodner said. "To me, the language demonstrates the gravity of the situation."
University of Virginia law professor Richard Bonnie, who chairs the commission, said the panel also plans to focus on facilitating psychiatric advance directives — legal documents the mentally ill draft to determine how they would like to be treated if they are ever committed involuntarily.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Supreme Court Blocks Execution of Mentally Ill Killer in Texas
Pete Yost
The Associated Press
06-29-2007
A divided Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the execution of a Texas killer whose lawyers argued that he should not be put to death because he is mentally ill.
The Court ruled 5-4 in the case of Scott Louis Panetti, who shot his in-laws to death 15 years ago in front of his wife and young daughter.
The convicted murderer says that he suffers from a severe documented illness that is the source of gross delusions. "This argument, we hold, should have been considered," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion.
Panetti's lawyers wanted the Court to determine that people who cannot understand the connection between their crime and punishment because of mental illness may not be executed.
The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution bars "the execution of a person who is so lacking in rational understanding that he cannot comprehend that he is being put to death because of the crime he was convicted of committing," they said in court papers.
In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said that Panetti had petitioned the federal courts twice in his case, but that the law allows only one petition.
"The court bends over backwards to allow Panetti" to bring his current claim, despite no evidence that his condition has worsened, or even changed, since 1995, Thomas wrote.
One of Panetti's lawyers, Scott Hampton of Austin, Texas, said he was relieved.
"Executing Scott Panetti would have been a mindless, meaningless, miserable spectacle," said Hampton.
Siding with Kennedy in the majority were Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
Joining Thomas in dissent were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito.
Texas said the Court should reject Panetti's appeal on procedural grounds. But it also argued that the Court should set a tougher standard for mental illness exceptions to capital punishment. Only if a death row inmate "lacks the capacity to recognize that his punishment both is the result of his being convicted of capital murder and will cause his death" should his execution be halted, the state said. Panetti is competent on that basis, it said.
Panetti was condemned for the September 1992 slayings of his estranged wife's parents, Joe Alvarado, 55, and Amanda Alvarado, 56, at their Fredericksburg home in the Texas Hill Country. His wife was living with them at the time. A week earlier she obtained a court order to keep him away.
His wife and 3-year-old daughter, sprayed with blood when Panetti shot his in-laws, were held hostage until he surrendered after a lengthy standoff with police. He blamed it all on "Sarge," one of his multiple personalities.
A former ranch hand and native of Hayward, Wis., Panetti had a history of mental problems before his conviction, recording 14 hospital stays over 11 years.
Four courts have said he was competent when he fired his trial lawyers. A jury and two courts rejected his defense of not guilty by reason of insanity. He personally argued that only an insane person could prove the insanity defense, dressing in cowboy clothing and submitting an initial witness list that included Jesus Christ and John F. Kennedy.
Then-Justice Lewis Powell said 20 years ago that a person may not be put to death if he cannot perceive "the connection between his crime and his punishment."
The case is Panetti v. Quarterman, 06-6407.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Stephanie K. McCoy
Paralegal
Cohen Kennedy Dowd & Quigley
The Camelback Esplanade I
2425 East Camelback Road, Suite 1100
Phoenix, Arizona 85016
Ph: 602.252.8400
www.ckdqlaw.com
The Associated Press
06-29-2007
A divided Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the execution of a Texas killer whose lawyers argued that he should not be put to death because he is mentally ill.
The Court ruled 5-4 in the case of Scott Louis Panetti, who shot his in-laws to death 15 years ago in front of his wife and young daughter.
The convicted murderer says that he suffers from a severe documented illness that is the source of gross delusions. "This argument, we hold, should have been considered," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion.
Panetti's lawyers wanted the Court to determine that people who cannot understand the connection between their crime and punishment because of mental illness may not be executed.
The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution bars "the execution of a person who is so lacking in rational understanding that he cannot comprehend that he is being put to death because of the crime he was convicted of committing," they said in court papers.
In dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said that Panetti had petitioned the federal courts twice in his case, but that the law allows only one petition.
"The court bends over backwards to allow Panetti" to bring his current claim, despite no evidence that his condition has worsened, or even changed, since 1995, Thomas wrote.
One of Panetti's lawyers, Scott Hampton of Austin, Texas, said he was relieved.
"Executing Scott Panetti would have been a mindless, meaningless, miserable spectacle," said Hampton.
Siding with Kennedy in the majority were Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
Joining Thomas in dissent were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito.
Texas said the Court should reject Panetti's appeal on procedural grounds. But it also argued that the Court should set a tougher standard for mental illness exceptions to capital punishment. Only if a death row inmate "lacks the capacity to recognize that his punishment both is the result of his being convicted of capital murder and will cause his death" should his execution be halted, the state said. Panetti is competent on that basis, it said.
Panetti was condemned for the September 1992 slayings of his estranged wife's parents, Joe Alvarado, 55, and Amanda Alvarado, 56, at their Fredericksburg home in the Texas Hill Country. His wife was living with them at the time. A week earlier she obtained a court order to keep him away.
His wife and 3-year-old daughter, sprayed with blood when Panetti shot his in-laws, were held hostage until he surrendered after a lengthy standoff with police. He blamed it all on "Sarge," one of his multiple personalities.
A former ranch hand and native of Hayward, Wis., Panetti had a history of mental problems before his conviction, recording 14 hospital stays over 11 years.
Four courts have said he was competent when he fired his trial lawyers. A jury and two courts rejected his defense of not guilty by reason of insanity. He personally argued that only an insane person could prove the insanity defense, dressing in cowboy clothing and submitting an initial witness list that included Jesus Christ and John F. Kennedy.
Then-Justice Lewis Powell said 20 years ago that a person may not be put to death if he cannot perceive "the connection between his crime and his punishment."
The case is Panetti v. Quarterman, 06-6407.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Stephanie K. McCoy
Paralegal
Cohen Kennedy Dowd & Quigley
The Camelback Esplanade I
2425 East Camelback Road, Suite 1100
Phoenix, Arizona 85016
Ph: 602.252.8400
www.ckdqlaw.com
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